Can’t take the sky from No Man’s Sky. It’s built right into the name, see. You can take the game from Green Man Gaming for a cool $25, however, and that’s exactly what I did last night because that’s cheap, and I wanted it, and I want my kid to have a go at it too because it’s gonna blow his Spore-playing mind.
As VG247 pointed out, I am not alone: SteamCharts is tracking a massive boost in concurrency since the NEXT launch yesterday, over 41,000 people playing. June’s peak, by comparison, was 2000-ish. (Launch was over 200,000, though.)
Polygon called NEXT the “second coming” of the game. The @NoMansPics Twitter account has exploded with eyecandy. The NMS subreddit is filled with weepy gratitude, particularly from people thrilled to finally be playing with distant friends. Steam’s recent reviews have jumped up to “very positive,” but it doesn’t look as if the game will ever live down its overall “mostly negative” ranking thanks to the original 80,000 review spread. Then again, as my guildies demonstrated to me yesterday, that overall “mostly negative” score is wearing some sort of invisibility cloak; they noticed only the big boost to the recents when praising the game.
“Thank you all so much for playing the game, and for giving us feedback,” Hello Games’ Sean Murray tweeted yesterday. “Today has been overwhelming. A build is already being prepped with the first round of fixes and improvements – it’ll hit PC experimental soon.”
One downside so far: RPS reports that the GOG version of the game isn’t getting multiplayer right away; expect it later this year.
Get caught up on our best NMS coverage since its launch two years back!
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